Pennsylvania's Marketplace of Ideas

Right Wing Limericks

by Al Bienstock

OBAMACARE PERSUASION

The Obamacare plan is pure junk.
Grade the plan and the rollout â€“ they flunk.
So, Barack has a plan â€“
If you are a barman,
Sell it by getting young people drunk.

Washington Examiner, 12/5/13: "During today's White House Youth Summit, President Obama called on young people to do whatever then can to promote his signature health Care law â€“ including plying their customers with cheap booze. 'If you're a bartender, have A happy hour,' Obama said..."

OBAMACARE SECURITY RISK

For consumer fraud on a grand scale,
On security, their grade is Fail.
Personal info at risk?
Their response is, tsk tsk.
Obama's team should all be in jail.

The Daily Caller, 12/4/13: "A 'good-guy hacker' who probed for weaknesses in the security systems of HealthCare.gov told Fox News on Wednesday that 'no security was built into this entire infrastructure' and that citizens' personal data is at serious risk."

CAN'T KEEP YOUR PLAN, DOCS OR DRUGS

Obamacare deserves lots of "ughs."
Its developers â€“ a bunch of thugs â€“
From the start were aware
That they'd destroy healthcare.
The latest is... you can't keep your drugs.

Forbes, 12/9/13: "Simply put, many drugs may not be covered at all, and the costs patients incur by buying them with cash won't count against out of pocket caps."

INCOME REDISTRIBUTION

Leftists shout that taxes should be "fair"
And the wealthy should pay their "fair share."
But the truth libs abhor
Is that the "rich" pay more
(A fact of which we should be aware).

Left-wingers choose to misrepresent
What tax payments by the "rich" have meant.
The poorest four in ten
Pay less than nothing, when
Their net's minus nine-point-one percent.

CNS News, 12/9/13: "The top 40 percent of households by before-tax income actually paid 106.2 percent of the nation's net income taxes in 2010, according to a new study by the Congressional Budget Office. At the same time, households in the bottom 40 percent took in an average of $18,950 in what CBO called 'government transfers' in 2010. Taxpayers in the top 40 percent of households were able to pay more than 100 percent of net federal income taxes in 2010 because Americans in the bottom 10 percent actually paid negative income taxes, according to the CBO study entitled 'The Distribution of Household Income and Federal Taxes, 2010' ... In 2010, the lowest Quintile's average rate for the individual income tax was â€“9.2 percent and the second Income quintile's rate was â€“2.3 percent."

Politicians have long used Orwellian double-speak to hide their true intentions. The latest iteration of this trend in Pennsylvania is the Governor's, Senate's and House Democrat's insistence on including "recurring revenue" in any budget agreement. Recurring revenue sounds much [...]

Next week, one of the most important pieces of legislation to come before Congress this year will be voted on by the Senate. Itâ€™s the latest and perhaps final Republican proposal to replace Obamacare.Itâ€™s primarily the product of South Carolina [...]

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Lincoln Blog

by Lowman S. Henry

Shutdown Protests

October 11, 2013

As the partial federal government shutdown enters yet another weekend with President Obama refusing to negotiate with congress over a wide range of fiscal policy issues, average Americans are poised to take matters into their own hands.

Beginning today, truckers are planning to clog the beltway around Washington, D.C. by arriving en masse and driving slowly to tie up the lanes. Of course anyone who has driven on the D.C. beltway knows bumper-to-bumper traffic is the norm, so it might be a while before anybody notices.

Veterans are organizing a march on the memorials surrounding the capitol mall. World War II vets made news the first day of the partial shutdown by removing "barrycades" and paying their respects at the World War II memorial in defiance of the closure.

Locally, a Facebook group is organizing a march on the Gettysburg battlefield. Like the national mall memorials, the battlefield at Gettysburg is open space which does not require federal employees to monitor admission.

While there is considerable underlying anger among the electorate over the stalemate that has resulted in the partial shutdown, outrage has ensued over the manner in which it has been handled. The Obama Administration has sought to make the most painful cuts and closures possible in an effort to provoke pressure on congress.

In the end though, voters themselves are responsible for the gridlock in Washington. The fact is the nation is deeply and evenly divided over the future course of the republic. Two consecutive presidential election cycles have elected a Democrat president and U.S. Senate, and one ‘off-year" cycle has produced a Republican House. This is in fact representative of the nation as a whole. All of the above are simply doing what the folks who elected them sent them to Washington to do.

If we as an electorate can't arrive at consensus, how then are we to expect are elected representatives to do so?